The Political Economy of Dissent: Global Publics
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YORK UNIVERSITY | 4700 KeeleKeele Street,Street, Toronto,Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3 : , , © Daniel Drache, June 2004. Please address any comments to:[email protected] Summary This paper examines the realignment of forces that derailed the September 2003 Cancun meeting. According to conventional wisdom, the broadening and deepening of the WTO’s trade agenda was supposed to be a done deal. Instead the growing disjuncture between global cultural fl ows of people and ideas, and the rules and practices of globalization has created a highly unstable environment with many opportunities, but at the same time signifi cant political costs. Regardless of what EU and US may admit in public, at Cancun global dissent and its publics acquired visible agenda-setting power. The growth in infl uence of the ‘nixers’ and ‘fi xers’ has contributed to a tectonic shift in the international economy that has immediate and far-reaching consequences for destabilizing globalization and its narrow economic agenda. The second argument here is that global cultural fl ows of ideas, texts, and wealth have deepened the global environment of dissent at the WTO. Many of these fl ows are a consequence of free trade itself. They have accelerated as economic barriers have fallen facilitating the movement of ideas, people and texts driven by new technologies and an appetite for mass culture. Increased trade has increased cultural interaction globally. These concentrated movements of peoples and ideas beget other fl ows triggering a cyclical movement of dissent which is highly disjunctive for the goals of economic globalization. When these global cultural fl ows function as catalysts for change, they become a conduit for the global movement of social forces. They set new agendas and, it is this agenda-setting capacity that challenges state authority globally no less than locally. So far there is no single over-riding vision that addresses the collective problem of diversity at the global level. Nonetheless, the global dissent movement intends to have a prominent role in defi ning public culture and in shaping it in inherently democratic ways. Keywords WTO Cancun meeting, global cultural fl ows, dissent, counter-publics, cultural diversity, anti-globalization movement, global public opinion, new information technologies Th e Political Economy of Dissent: Global Publics After Cancun – Daniel Drache I Th e Political Economy of Dissent: Global Publics After Cancun Daniel Drache, Associate Director of the Robarts Centre, York University Th e Turning Point No one can afford to be indifferent to the profound absence of forward momentum in the world trading system. Both regional and global trade negotiations, by quite separate paths and for distinct reasons, have arrived at an impasse. ‘Turning point’ is an apt phrase suggesting the presence of an array of forces pushing and pulling the present world trading system towards a new confi guration with different rules, practices, ideas, and mentalities (Prestowitz 2003; Barber 2003). To look at the political economy of dissent through this lens helps identify the processes and behaviours that have produced the present global impasse. In this context it is helpful to analyze the prospects for long-term dramatic improvement in poverty eradication and global governance. States and territorial communities are not about to disappear from world politics. Public spending has risen throughout the 90s in many jurisdictions in the global North. Modern welfare states have not buckled, as once predicted, but they are smaller and less potent instruments for redistributive ends (Lammert 2004). As sovereignty is rendered increasingly porous it has become, paradoxically, more important for national authority everywhere and citizenship engagement. Access to information fl ows from both mainstream and alternative print, and electronic media has created highly visible counter-forums worldwide and a yawning digital divide (World Summit on Information Society 2000). The revolution in information and technology has diffused power away from governments; this has empowered social groups and individuals to play a large role in world politics, an arena that used to be the exclusive preserve of public authority (Nye 2002). For the stability and vitality of the global economy and national communities, we need to drill down and determine the value of these informational fl ows. The question is: will states and global international institutions learn to view these networked fl ows and actors as a public good essential for a more equitable order? Or, are nation-states on an irreversible collision course with global public dissenters, their ‘new rivals and competitors’? There are two linked parts to the analysis. In part one, we examine the realignment of forces that derailed the September 2003 Cancun meeting. According to conventional wisdom, the move to broaden and deepen the WTO’s world trade agenda was supposed to be a done deal. Instead the growing disjuncture between global cultural fl ows of people and ideas, and the rules and practices of globalization has created a highly unstable environment with many opportunities, but at the same time signifi cant political costs. Regardless of what the EU and US may admit in public, at Cancun global dissent and its publics acquired visible agenda-setting power. The growth in infl uence of the ‘nixers’ and ‘fi xers’ has contributed to a tectonic shift in the international economy that has immediate and far-reaching consequences for destabilizing globalization and its narrow economic agenda. Part two of the paper focuses on how global cultural fl ows of ideas, texts and wealth have deepened the global environment of dissent at the WTO. Many of these fl ows are the consequence of free trade itself. They have accelerated as economic barriers have fallen facilitating the movement of ideas, people and texts driven further by new technologies and the appetite for mass culture. Increased trade has increased cultural interaction globally. These concentrated movements of peoples and ideas beget other fl ows triggering a cyclical movement of dissent that is highly disjunctive for the goals of economic globalization. When these global cultural fl ows function as catalysts for change, they become a conduit for the global movement of social forces. They set new agendas and it is this agenda-setting capacity that challenges state authority globally no less that it does locally.2 The core argument can be summarized as follows: powerful global cultural fl ows have added a whole new dimension to global dynamics that used to be primarily economic. Cultural power and related issues refl ect the stamp of collective identity. As such culture has become an explicitly fi erce battleground against US cultural industries and American trade policies that attempt to commodify cultural production treating culture like any other for-profi t commodity. If democracy is to be fostered, Yudice Th e Political Economy of Dissent: Global Publics After Cancun – Daniel Drache 1 argues that, “public spheres in which deliberation on questions of the public good are to be held must be permeable to different cultures” (Yudice 2003: 23). Framing and creating the relevant mechanisms for expressing identity (Zukin 1995) requires safeguard measures that do not exist at present. One of the goals of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity is to protect global cultural diversity, language rights, local cultural production, media ownership and intellectual property from prejudicial trade practices and the unequal advancement of new information technologies (UNESCO 2001). It would be nice if globally shared meanings could succeed in creating a common culture of citizenship that would allow the global public to navigate the crisis, but so far there is no single over-riding vision that addresses the collective problem of diversity at the global level. Nonetheless, the global dissent movement intends to have a prominent role in defi ning public culture and in shaping it in inherently democratic ways. What it has come to realize is that culture is not only about the images, symbols and shared understandings that get people to buy branded products; it is also about the rules and the framework for the ideas, and the processes of exchange on which business thrives. One of the principal conclusions that the political economy of dissent points to is that people are learning to use culture as an economic base and when they do this trade negotiations become highly contested sites for the anti-globalization movement and leading countries in the global South. At the present time the public’s appetite for more free trade has soured and the world trading system acts like a magnet for global dissent of all persuasions. The singular focus on the WTO has intensifi ed the cycle of dissent and imposed a degree of cohesion on a highly diverse and confl icted movement. As a result the old process of deal making, which produced the WTO’s Uruguay Round, is in shambles. In these new circumstances governments ought not to underestimate the capacity and resiliency of the global dissent movement to challenge many of the core assumptions about the nature of global politics as presently confi gured. It is now evident that no one owns the public and no one can manipulate it for very long, although political elites always try to channel and control it. Political elites remain baffl ed by its power, reach and impact as Bush and Blair have painfully learned. No one can turn the public off; it has its own dynamics and properties. What distinguishes the counterpublic today from that of four decades ago is its organizational decentralization and its global reach. Today’s counterpublic is user driven and does not rely on face-to-face contact for mobilization. Much of it is maintained without any organization at all, and signifi cantly, a great deal of the dissenting, non-conforming public holds to no grand narrative for toppling state power.